Merit Aid and Sorting: The Effects of HOPE-Style Scholarships on College Stratification by Ability, Race and Gender

在过去的十年里，对高等教育的资助越来越多地与功绩挂钩。在此期间，一些州政府承诺提供数百万美元的援助，在大多数情况下完全放弃经济状况调查。这些州行动的典范一直是佐治亚州的希望(“在教育上帮助优秀学生”)奖学金。霍普奖学金于1993年推出，涵盖佐治亚州公立大学学生的学费、杂费和书本费，并为就读州立私立大学的学生提供同等价值的补贴，没有任何收入限制。自成立以来，已向超过525,000名学生发放了超过12亿美元的希望奖学金。希望式援助引起的相对价格变化影响了几个重要的招生决定：州内和州外、两年和四年、劳动力市场和两年(或四年)。学生在这些边缘地带的流动引发了一些重要的问题，即优秀助学金对学生分类的影响。这项研究将考察像希望这样的项目在多大程度上导致了按能力、种族和性别进行的大学分层。个人分类是生活中无处不在的事实。生命早期的资源在很大程度上决定了一个人的中学后教育的水平和质量。从分类的角度来看，父母的资源决定了你住在哪里，从哪里开始上学，这会提高孩子的大学前景。大学学位反过来又增加了劳动力和婚姻市场的机会。因此，在一定程度上，成绩与家庭收入相关，像HOPE奖学金这样的项目加强了在大学招生决定之前建立的分类模式的效果。

Over the past decade, aid for post-secondary schooling has become increasingly tied to merit. During this period, a number of state governments have committed millions of dollars to merit aid, in most cases dropping means tests entirely. The model for these state actions has been Georgia's HOPE ("Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally") Scholarship. Introduced in 1993, the HOPE Scholarship covers tuition, fees, and book expenses for students attending Georgia public colleges, and provides a subsidy of comparable value to students attending in-state private colleges, without any income restrictions. Since its inception, more than $1.2 billion of HOPE scholarship aid has been distributed to over 525,000 students. The relative price changes induced by HOPE-style aid influence several important enrollment decisions: in-state versus out-of-state, 2-year versus 4-year, labor-market versus 2-year (or 4-year). Student movements along these margins raise important questions about the effects of merit aid on student sorting. This study will examine the degree to which programs like HOPE lead to college stratification by ability race and gender. Individual sorting is a pervasive fact of life. Resources early in life determine in large part the level and quality of a person's postsecondary education. From the perspective of sorting, parental resources determine where you live and where begin your schooling, which enhance a child's college prospects. A college degree, in turn, improves labor and marriage market opportunities. Thus, to the extent merit is correlated with household income, programs like the HOPE Scholarship reinforce the effects of sorting patterns established prior to the college enrollment decision.